This magnificent portrait shows the artist with his second wife and one of their five children strolling in a "Garden of Love." The child wears male attire and must be Frans (1633–1678). He appears without his older sister because the picture is not a family portrait but an homage to Helena as wife and mother, one of whose most important attributes was providing her husband with a son. The gestures and glances of both male figures and symbols of fecundity such as the fountain and caryatid pay tribute to Helena, who has the innocence and serenity of a female saint. For further discussion of this famous picture, see metmuseum.org/collections.

This magnificent and at the same time quite personal work was painted by Rubens in more than one campaign, probably during the mid-1630s. The artist himself is shown escorting his young second wife, Helena Fourment, through a formal garden reminiscent of the one behind Rubens’s house in Antwerp. His first wife, Isabella Brant, had died in 1626, and during the next four years the painter threw himself into large projects and diplomatic missions in England and Spain. On December 6, 1630, at the age of fifty-three, Rubens married Helena, who at sixteen was the youngest of eleven children born to the artist’s old friend Daniel Fourment, a prosperous silk and tapestry merchant in Antwerp. A sister (Clara) of Rubens’s first wife was married to one of Helena’s brothers, and her niece (another Clara), the only child of Helena’s sister Susanna—the woman seen in Rubens’s half-length portrait also in the Museum (1976.218)—married Albert Rubens, the artist’s eldest son from his first marriage.

There are numerous written and pictorial records testifying to the happiness of Rubens’s marriage to the beautiful Helena, who became the inspiration for goddesses and ideal women in many of his paintings dating from the 1630s. Five children were born to the couple, the last one (Constantina) eight months after Rubens died on May 30, 1640. Their firstborn was Clara Joanna, baptized on January 18, 1632, and she was followed by Frans (bap. July 12, 1633), Isabella Helena (bap. May 3, 1635), and Peter Paul (bap. March 1, 1637). Many writers (most recently Fahy 2005) have assumed that since only one child is shown in the Museum’s painting it must be Helena’s first, which—assuming that the child (with its "leading string" and bumper-hat) is no more than two years old—would date the painting to 1633–34. However, costume experts insist that the child’s attire is male; Marieke de Winkel (correspondence of 2008 in departmental files), for example, notes that the flat collar and diagonal sash are not only male attributes (as in many other Netherlandish portraits of children) but also deliberate analogies to the collar and baldric (sword belt) worn by Rubens in this portrait. The costumes and apparent ages of Rubens and Helena as well as the painting’s style point to a date in the mid-1630s. Thus the child would be Frans, and the date would be about 1635.

Rubens’s more personal portraits are so vivacious and, in the case of family members, heartfelt that even specialists overlook how carefully the artist conveyed specific messages about each figure’s role within the family or society. Here the essential subject is Helena as wife and mother, and her most important attribute is the fact that she has provided Rubens with a son. An analogous but less elaborate work is Rubens’s portrait of Helena with the naked Frans on her lap, of about 1635, in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

The focus on Helena is emphasized by the entire composition and by the deferential glances and gestures of Rubens and his son. Originally (as seen in radiographs) Rubens gestured to and glanced at the viewer; substantial repainting of his figure cast him in a more subordinate and supportive role. The setting is a "Garden of Love," which like the caryatid and fountain suggests fertility. Ivy to the left and right recalls the description in Psalm 128 of a wife as a fruitful vine at the side of a man’s house. The parrot was associated with the Virgin Mary and purity; Vlieghe (1987) notes that the parrot bites a thorny branch, symbolizing the pain and pleasure that come with love.

The early history of the picture is unknown, and it is somewhat uncertain how it entered the collection of its first known owner, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (d. 1722). The painting remained at the family seat, Blenheim Palace, until 1884 when the eighth duke sold it to Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, Paris. It descended in the Rothschild family until the death of Baronne Germaine de Rothschild in 1975; in 1978 the portrait was acquired from her estate (through Wildenstein) by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman. Their gift to the Museum in 1981 greatly enhanced the most important collection of paintings by Rubens outside Europe.

Mrs. Philip Lybbe Powys. Diary entry. August 1759 [published in Emily J. Climenson, ed., "Passages from the Diaries of Mrs. Philip J. Lybbe Powys of Hardwick House, Oxon., A.D. 1756–1808," London, 1899, p. 43], describes a visit to Blenheim Palace and mentions that "in the third apartment is that charming picture of Rubens' family by himself".

[Thomas Martyn]. The English Connoisseur: Containing an Account of Whatever is Curious in Painting, Sculpture, &c. in the Palaces and Seats of the Nobility and Principal Gentry of England, Both in Town and Country. London, 1766, vol. 1, p. 17.

John Smith. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters. 2, London, 1830, pp. 243–44, no. 831, states that it was presented by the city of Brussels to John, Duke of Marlborough, and was worth 3,000 guineas; mentions an engraving by MacArdell [McArdell] and three chalk studies by Rubens, one for each of the portraits, in the Louvre.

Gabrielle Kopelman Columbia University. The Evolution of a Late Rubens Family Portrait. September 24, 1982 [published in Tableau 5 (Summer 1983), pp. 380–86, ill. (overall, details, and x-radiograph details; German translation in Du, no. 509 (July 1983), pp. 6–15, 93, ill.], hypothetically reconstructs the first and second stages of the composition, suggesting that Helena and her son were originally depicted alone.

Walter Liedtke. "'Everything is not the same': Style and Expression in Some Religious Paintings by Rubens." Rubens and his Workshop: "The Flight of Lot and his Family from Sodom". Exh. cat., National Museum of Western Art. Tokyo, 1994, pp. 138–40 n. 25, figs. 10–11 (overall and x-radiograph), discusses changes made to the composition.

Aileen Ribeiro. The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750 to 1820. New Haven, 1995, pp. 195, 243 n. 42, mentions a copy after this picture by J. G. Eccardt formerly at Strawberry Hill where the figures have been replaced by Charles Churchill, his wife, Lady Maria Walpole, and their eldest won, Charles (Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, New Hampshire); adds that the Rubens painting also inspired Romney's portrait of Sir Christopher and Lady Sykes (1786–93; Sir Tatton Sykes, Bt.).

Ben van Beneden. "Rubens's House Revealed." Apollo 169 (March 2009), pp. 107–8 n. 23, identifies it as the source for the figures in the "View of the Courtyard and Garden of the Former House of Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp" (Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury) attributed to an Antwerp painter of the seventeenth century.

Radiographs reveal that the figure of Rubens was originally shorter; the head was nearly frontal and was inclined to the left, the eyes probably directed toward Helena; the right arm was raised to the chest. The first self-portrait in this picture was very similar to the earlier self-portrait in the Rubenshuis, Antwerp, to a drawing at Windsor, to the head in the panel of "Rubens and Helena Fourment Walking in Their Garden" (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), and to the male figure on the left in "The Garden of Love" (Prado, Madrid). The radiographs and an inspection of the painting's surface also indicate that the composition (not the support) was arched above at some earlier stage in its execution. A drawing of a young woman with an ostrich fan (Musée du Louvre, Paris), generally recognized as a study for one of the principal figures in "The Garden of Love," except for the position of the hands more closely resembles the figure of Helena in the present picture. A portrait drawing at Windsor is probably a study for the self-portrait that was painted out of the Museum's picture. Three chalk studies, one for each of the portraits, are in the Louvre. When at Blenheim, the picture was engraved in mezzotint by Charles Phillips and by James McArdell. John Eccardt closely followed the composition of the MMA picture when he painted the portrait of Charles and Mary Churchill, dated 1750 (Lewis-Walpole Library, Farmington, Connecticut). Bernard Lens also copied the MMA work it in a miniature of 1721 (MMA 1984.442).